20 year old woman wants parents prosecuted for treating the hole in her heart at birth with faith instead of getting her the medical help that she needed.

Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:  

Mariah Walton, a 20-year-old woman awaiting a heart and lung transplant, said she thinks her parents and other faith healers should face criminal charges for “treating” her with prayer instead of medicine.

It’s a tale as old as time: girl is born with a small hole in her heart, her parents refuse to get it fixed and instead ask God to oversee her well-being, girl is now permanently disabled due to years of being refused care. The twist, however, is that Walton — unlike many faith healing victims — lived on to call for her parents’ prosecution and to condemn the practice in general. 

“It would have been solved. If I had a surgery when I was one year old, I would have been just fine,” Walton said in an interview with KTVB News. She said she can’t run, misses a lot of school, and gets sick easily because of her weakened immune system.

Instead of getting her the simple medical procedure that she needed Mariah's parents subjected her to "alternative medicines" and faith healing which allowed her condition to worsen until it was life threatening. 

Oddly enough her parents did not "trust" modern medicine, but had no problem trusting that God existed and would heal their child if only they had enough faith.

Fortunate this young woman survived, and now those same parents can pray that they do not end up in jail for condemning their daughter to a lifetime of unnecessary suffering.

Oregon couple who chose faith healing over medicine and allowed their infant son to die are on their way to prison.

Courtesy of Deadstate: 

Dale and Shannon Hickman don’t believe in doctors. Because of this religious conviction, set forth by the cult the couple belongs to, Oregon City’s Followers of Christ Church, the Hickmans let their premature infant die after being being born at home rather than seek medical help. As a result of this decision, the couple was convicted of manslaughter in 2011. 

The child, named David Hickman, weighed just 3 lbs, 7 ounces at birth. His tragically short life was only 9 hours long. According to reports, the Hickmans went to Shannon’s mother for help when she began having contractions more than two months prior to her due date. The couple says they didn’t notice anything was wrong with the baby until just minutes prior to his death — a claim which an expert on this subject has called a lie. Instead of calling a hospital like most rational people, they prayed over the dying baby and “anointed” his head with oil. 

Both halves of the Hickman couple will spend a minimum of 6 years and 3 months in prison for their actions, which is light, considering the fact that their child lost his life over their idiotic beliefs. The judge in the case, Robert Herndon, called one of the cult’s midwives “one of the most dangerous people in Oregon.”

Okay so here's m question.

Where is the outrage from the "pro-life" community over this?

After all this is not a fetus, this is an actual child, born into the world, and denied a life due to the superstitious beliefs and ignorance of his parents.

You would think this would anger them beyond all measure, and yet not a peep.

Reliance on faith is killing our children. Literally.

Courtesy of Slate:  

Forty-eight states—all except West Virginia and Mississippi—allow religious exemptions from vaccination. (California would be the third exception if its bill becomes law.) A similar deference to religion applies to all medical care for children. As the National District Attorneys Association reports, 43 states give some kind of criminal or civil immunity to parents who injure their children by withholding medical care on religious grounds. 

If your faith mandates spiritual healing and your child dies because you offer prayer instead of insulin or antibiotics, your chances of being charged with a crime are slim. There are religious exemptions for child neglect and abuse, negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter. Several states allow parents to use a religious defense against charges of murder of their child—and in some places they can’t be charged with murder at all. And even when parents are prosecuted, acquiescence to religious belief often leads to their being acquitted or given light sentences, including unsupervised parole. None of this, of course, applies to parents who refuse medical care on nonreligious grounds; those individuals get no immunity from prosecution. 

Some states allow religious exemptions from required testing of newborns for metabolic disorders, such as the inability to break down fats or amino acids, that can kill an untreated child but are perfectly treatable if caught early. Some states allow exemptions from giving newborns hearing tests or prophylactic eyedrops that can prevent blindness in infants infected with herpes. Seven states allow religious exemptions from testing children for lead levels in their blood, and six even allow religious exemptions to students learning about disease in school. In perhaps the most bizarre and potentially dangerous law, public school teachers in California can legally refuse to be tested for tuberculosis on religious grounds. 

These exemptions have produced the expected result: Hundreds of children have gotten sick and died because their parents resorted to faith rather than medicine.

We live in the 21st Century. There is no longer ANY excuse for this kind of negligent child abuse to be allowed to continue. 

The rights of your religion, or superstitious beliefs, end when it potentially causes injury, or possibly death, to your chld.

Period!

Colorado state representative Gordon Klingenschmitt claims that people don't need no stinking Obamacare. Not when they have God as their heavenly physician.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Gordon Klingenschmitt is excited about a recent Fox News poll that claims that 58 percent of Americans want to repeal Obamacare, declaring on his "Pray In Jesus Name" program recently that people ought to be relying on God for their healthcare. 

Citing a passage from Exodus 15, Klingenschmitt asserted that God will protect people from disease so long as they obey His commands and said that Americans "ought to look to the Lord for our healthcare." 

"I personally prefer to look to almighty God as my healer and not to the government as a substitute god or substitute healer," he said, before praying that this nation would "repent of worshiping President Obama as if he is a god." 

Here is the video:

You know it sounds to me that God was only promising not to bring the same plagues upon his people that he unleashed on the Egyptians.

Which include water to blood, a butt load of frogs, gnats or lice, swarms of flies, sick cattle, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and death of your firstborn.

Nowhere does it claim that you will be healed of cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, or any of the actual sicknesses that modern man faces today.

So WTF is this guy even talking about?

And don't even get me started on the fact that since the Egyptians never had Jews as slaves in the first place that this entire story is based on pure unadulterated horseshit.

Good job Colorado. 

Mother whose daughter died of cancer while she was attempting to save her by using faith healing, wants her child neglect charges thrown out. I agree, instead she should be convicted of manslaughter at the very least.

Courtesy of The Tennessean: 

An East Tennessee woman convicted of child neglect in her teenage daughter’s cancer death is asking the state Supreme Court to declare that she is innocent because she relied on prayer to heal the girl. 

Jacqueline Crank was sentenced to unsupervised probation after her 15-year-old daughter died of Ewing’s sarcoma in 2002. 

Despite the light sentence, Crank has continued to pursue the case, arguing that faith-healing should be legal for everyone. 

The Tennessee Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in Knoxville on Thursday. 

State law makes it a crime to fail to provide medical care to children, but there is an exception for those who rely on prayer alone for healing. However, the Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act applies only to faith healing performed by an accredited practitioner of a recognized church or religious denomination. 

In turning to prayer for her daughter’s healing, Crank relied on the advice of Ariel Ben Sherman, who called himself the girl’s “spiritual father.” 

Testimony showed Sherman was accredited by the Universal Life Church, which will accredit anyone who fills out an application.

Damn this shit infuriates me!

And what the fuck is an "accredited practitioner" of fucking faith healing?

This is 2014 you superstitious inbred assholes!

You know if Tennessee would stop fearing religious people, and grow a pair, they could start charging these frauds with murder and believe you me suddenly all kinds of people would start receiving legitimate medical service for their health problems.

I swear the next person who dares to ask me what harm religion has done, is going to get hit so hard it will put bruises on their ancestors.

"You've killed two of your children. ... Not God. Not your church. Not religious devotion. You." Said by judge during sentencing of couple whose second child died due to belief in faith healing over medical treatment.

Courtesy of The Press News:  

Herbert and Catherine Schaible defied a court order to get medical care for their children after their 2-year-old son, Kent, died in 2009. Instead, they tried to comfort and pray over 8-month-old Brandon last year as he, too, died of treatable pneumonia. 

"My religious beliefs are that you should pray, and not have to use medicine. But because it is against the law, then whatever sentence you give me, I will accept," Catherine Schaible, 44, told the judge. She added that her beliefs have since changed. 

The Schaibles are third-generation members of an insular Pentecostal community, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia, where they also taught at the church school. They have seven surviving children. 
Judge Benjamin Lerner rejected defense claims that their religious beliefs "clashed" with the 2011 court order to get annual checkups and call a doctor if a child became ill. The order came after a jury convicted them of involuntary manslaughter in Kent's death, and they were sentenced to 10 years of probation. 

"April of 2013 wasn't Brandon's time to die," Lerner said, noting the violence committed throughout human history in the name of religion. "You've killed two of your children. ... Not God. Not your church. Not religious devotion. You." 

Experts say about a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year. 

The Schaibles are the rare couple to lose a second child that way. Their pastor, Nelson Clark, blamed Kent's death on a "spiritual lack" in the parents' lives, and insisted they would never seek medical care, even if another child was dying. 

"It was so foreseeable to me that this was going to happen," said Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore, who prosecuted both cases. "Everybody in the system failed these children." 

After the first death, she and public defender Mythri Jayaraman agreed that the couple's beliefs were so ingrained that their children remained at risk. They asked the earlier judge to have the family supervised by a Department of Human Services caseworker. Instead, the judge assigned them to probation officers, who are not trained to monitor children's welfare. 

Pescatore has called Brandon's symptoms "eerily similar" to Kent's. They included labored breathing and a refusal to eat. 

In his police statement last year, Herbert Schaible, 45, said, "We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power."

When people ask me what harm can faith do, this is the kind of thing that I think should be brought up time and time again. The idea that illness is the result of demonic power, and that the only way to cure it is through faith, is an archaic superstition which should not have purchase in this modern age.

And yet here it is.

However what is almost as big of a travesty is that the judge only gave this couple a sentence of three and a half to seven years, even though the third degree murder charge they were convicted on could have resulted in 40 years behind bars.

Now they will simply be out someday to usher in the death of a third child, whose only sin will to have been born to a pair of simple minded parents, whose superstitious beliefs are so fundamental to their personalities that they will blame his death on an imaginary devil rather than accept any responsibility.

Idaho Republican lawmaker fights law aimed at curbing deaths that result from faith healing. Because you know, Jesus.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A Republican lawmaker in Idaho is trying to stop a law aimed at preventing the deaths of children whose parents eschew medical treatment in favor of prayer. The Associated Press reported that state Rep. Christy Perry (R) believes that a law proposed by Democratic Rep. John Gannon violates religious freedom of families who believe God’s will supercedes modern medicine. 

“This is about religious beliefs, the belief God is in charge of whether they live, and God is in charge of whether they die,” said Perry of the Followers of Christ, an extremist group who have let at least four children die of treatable illnesses in the last three years. 

“This is about where they go for eternity,” she insisted. 

Gannon proposed the law after a string of deaths in Marsing, Idaho among the congregation of the Followers of Christ church. Autopsy reports of multiple children showed that their deaths could have been prevented by medical intervention. Instead, their bodies now lie in a cemetery overlooking the Snake River. 

In June of 2012, 15-year-old Arrian Jade Granden contracted food poisoning. Her autopsy showed that three days of vomiting ruptured her esophagus, causing her to hemorrhage to death. 

Toddler Preston John Bowers died at age 22 months of pneumonia in March of 2011. That same month, 14-year-old Rockwell Alexander Sevy died of a respiratory infection that blossomed into pneumonia, according to Canyon County Coroner Vicki Degeus-Morris. 

Linda Martin, a former Followers of Christ member, lent her voice to Gannon’s campaign to narrow Idaho’s religious exemptions to its injury-to-a-child laws.

"This is about where they go for eternity." That essentially places more importance on access to a fairytale life after death scenario, than it does on keeping the child around for the one life we know for a fact they have available to them.

That is insane!

Every parent should prioritize protecting their children in THIS life, over concerns about what happens to them in the next. If religion interferes with that, then it meets the definition of evil in my mind.

This kind of thinking angers me to my very core. And parents who eschew modern medicine in favor of superstitious nonsense should have their children removed from their home.

Just saying. 

Measles outbreak traced to mega-church where televangelist preaches that vaccinations cause autism. Probably just a coincidence.

Courtesy of Dead State:  

Texas health officials have zeroed-in on a megachurch — which has a history of preaching against vaccinations — as the point of origin for a measles outbreak. 

According to a report from ABC’s WFAA 8, a congregant contracted the virus while visiting a foreign country and then attended a service at the church before he knew he was infected. This Thursday, the Tarrant County Health Department announced its 11th measles diagnosis traced to the man, making it the 16th case to emerge statewide. As a result, the Texas Department of Health and Human Services issued a measles outbreak alert — an unprecedented development given that the virus has nearly been eradicated by vaccines for decades. 

Meanwhile this Sunday at Eagle Mountain International Church, Pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons was forced to dedicate most of her sermon to the fact that 11 of the 16 measles cases had been linked to church attendees. 

“We’re going to talk about some things affecting our church. And as we go through it, we remain steadfast that Jesus is more than enough,” Pearsons told the congregation. “There has been a […] confirmed case of the measles from the Tarrant County Health Department. And that’s a really big deal in that America — the United States has been essentially measles-free for, I think it’s 10 years. And so when measles pops up anywhere else in the United States, the health department — well, you know, it excites them.”

Here's the kicker Copeland Parsons is the daughter of televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who has been warning his flock about the dangers of vaccinations and promoting the idea that they are linked to autism, while promoting the power of faith healing.

In short Copeland's ignorance about science, and his proclamation that faith can overcome anything, has put his daughter's congregation in danger and forced her to essentially cover for his stupidity.  

And this my friends is why we get our health information from doctors and scientists and NOT from Evangelical preachers.

Philadelphia judge refuses to drop charges against parents who had SECOND child die due to their reliance on faith healing over medical treatment.

Courtesy of ABA Journal:  

A Philadelphia judge refused to dismiss charges of third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter against a faith-healing Pennsylvania couple after they lost a second child to bacterial pneumonia. 

Herbert and Catherine Schaible were charged after their 8-month-old son, Brandon, died in April, report the Associated Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. The couple prayed for Brandon’s recovery and did not seek medical help. 

The Schaibles were sentenced to 10 years of probation in 2011 for involuntary manslaughter in the death of their 2-year-old son. The couple had relied on prayer rather than medical treatment in that case as well. The Schaibles were required to get medical care for their children as a condition of probation. 

Judge Benjamin Lerner noted the condition in a hearing on Wednesday, according to the Inquirer account. "They promised never to let something like this happen again," Lerner said. "But when push came to shove, they prayed, with no more attention to that promise than a puff of air."

This is the kind of story that drives me crazy, because it is far more prevalent than I think people realize. 

I once worked with a boy with severe mental illness issues and learned that his parents, both college educated by the way, had once taken him to see both a faith healer and an exorcist. His parents were actually very nice and loving people, they were simply convinced that God could solve any problem and that all they had to do was to have enough faith.

When their son did not get better they blamed themselves for not being good enough Christians to earn God's grace.

To say that this exacerbated the problem is an understatement. The kid suffered from nightmares and psychotic breaks that made him very challenging to work with.

So I am glad that this judge reinforced that just because you are superstitious moron is NO excuse for allowing your child to suffer.

Religious faith cannot protect you from prosecution. Especially for murdering your own child.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

A deeply religious Wisconsin couple who prayed over their dying daughter rather than seek medical help were properly convicted of homicide, the state Supreme Court decided Wednesday. 

Kara Neumann, 11, of Weston, Wis., died March 23, 2008 — Easter Sunday — of complications of untreated juvenile onset diabetes. 

According to the case records, Kara had been showing symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration for more than a week, but her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, refused to take her to a pediatrician, and decided to respond to her illness with prayer, not medicine. 

A pediatrician testified that Kara's disease was highly treatable and that her chances of survival were high until "well into the day of her death." 

The Neumanns don't belong to any particular church, but they identify as Pentecostals, according to factual findings in the court record, none of which the Neumanns disputed. Some Pentecostals — but by no means all — believe that prayer and strong religious belief can cure all illnesses, a tradition that helped give rise to famous "faith healers" like Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn.

Sometimes I think that certain people should not be allowed to breed. And these kind of religious zealots are at the top of that list.

The depth of their religious deception was incredible.

Dale Neumann testified that he knew Kara was sick but never thought she might die. In fact, he testified that he thought that Jesus would bring her back from the dead, as he did with Lazarus in the Gospel of John. 

That is pathological. 

And the Benny Hinns and Oral Roberts of the world are complicit in reinforcing that pathology, and should be punished accordingly.

Disabled student emotionally scarred by people accosting her with prayers and attempts at faith healing.

Unwanted faith healing and prayer.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A disabled 22-year-old Duke University graduate named Megan has started a blog to discuss her experiences with aggressive Christians who want to lay hands on her and pray in an effort to heal her. According to The Friendly Atheist, Megan, who has a rare connective tissue disease called epidermolysis bullosa, had heard people all her life asking, “What’s the matter with Megan?” and has named her blog “The Matter with Megan” in response. 

”Having a visible disability is like shark bait for ignorant people lacking scruples,” she wrote in a blog post called “Please Don’t Pray with Me (In Airports)”. “I swear, the mere sight of crutches is like blood in the water.” 

She described an incident that took place when she was 15 years old. She was at an airport waiting to board a flight when two women descended upon her family and asked her mother, “May we pray with your daughter?” 

“(T)he next thing I knew I was caught in what can only be described as a quite unholy prayer sandwich,” Megan wrote. “The woman and her mother placed one hand on my back and one on my chest and right there, in the middle of the Ft. Lauderdale airport, began to feverishly pray on my body for Jesus to heal me. Between shouts of JESUS CRISTO! and HEAL HER FATHER GOD! their bodies shook violently, as if wracked by father, son, and holy ghost all at once.” 

The incidents, she said, while well-meaning, have left her with “scars on me as real as the ones on my body. Rather than heal me as they intended (and you know the old maxim about good intentions), they helped break my self-esteem.” 

She concluded the essay by saying that she wishes people’s good intentions could be tempered by greater amounts of “good judgment.” 

“I think that’s what God probably would have preferred,” she wrote. “Heaven knows I would.”

Wow, just when you thought you had heard everything about the arrogance of faith.

The idea that these people LITERALLY believe that they can focus the power of a being that their faith tells them created everything around them with but a thought, by asking for it, is simply astoundingly ridiculous to me.

Faith healing is one of the MOST egregious scams that religion pulls on its believers, and it sets them up to question the depth of their own faith or to believe that the God that they worship has turned his back on them.And that his unbelievably abusive in my opinion.

I think this young woman is incredibly brave, and I have NO doubt that she speaks for a number of disabled folks who are constantly subjected to this kind of unwanted, unnecessary, and unhelpful attention.

Good for her.

Fundamentalist Christian couple who lost first child because they tried to pray away his illness have now lost a 2nd child for the exact same reason. WTF?

Courtesy of the AP: 

A couple serving probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor could face new charges now that another son has died. 

Herbert and Catherine Schaible belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith healing. They lost their 8-month-old son, Brandon, last week after he suffered from diarrhea and breathing problems for at least a week, and stopped eating. Four years ago, another son died from bacterial pneumonia. 

Prosecutors said Tuesday that a decision on charges will be made after they get the results of an autopsy. 

Catherine Schaible's attorney, Mythri Jayaraman, cautioned against a rush to judgment, and said the couple are good parents deeply distraught over the loss of another child. 

"There are way more questions than answers at this point. We haven't seen the autopsy report. We don't know the cause of death of this child," Jayaraman told The Associated Press. "What we do know is Mr. and Mrs. Schaible are distraught, they are grieving, they are tremendously sad about the loss of their most recent baby."

Fuck that! I have NO sympathy for these superstitious morons.

They have essentially admitted to denying their second child medical treatment: 

A jury convicted the Schaibles of involuntary manslaughter in the January 2009 death of their 2-year-old son, Kent. The boy's symptoms had included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite. His parents said he was eating and drinking until the last day, and they had thought he was getting better. 

The Schaibles were sentenced to 10 years' probation. 

At a hearing Monday, a judge told the couple they had violated the terms of their probation, noting the Schaibles had told investigators that they prayed to God to make Brandon well instead of seeking medical attention. 

"You did that once, and the consequences were tragic," Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

The couple have seven other children who are now safely in foster care.

Hopefully they will NEVER be returned to these religious zealots.

The fact that this still happens in this day and age is unconscionable! And ANY pastor that may have encouraged this way of thinking should be brought up on manslaughter charges as well in my opinion.

Get it through your heads folks. Praying is an activity that may make you feel comforted or less alone, but it is NOT a method for receiving any actual reality based assistance for your problems.

And if that hurts your feelings, or seems like an attack on your faith, TOO DAMN BAD! I much would rather you be angry at me then to have your health negatively impacted or to end up someday mourning the death of your child.

One of my personal heroes.

An Honest Liar - Work-in-Progress trailer from Justin Weinstein on Vimeo.

When I was in my early twenties I found this book, and read it cover to cover.

This was during a time when I was spending a lot of time researching religions and philosophy, and was looking at the world with renewed skepticism. For critical thinkers and skeptics Randi was an absolute MUST read.

Though somewhat dated now, at the time Flim-Flam was a groundbreaking book that helped to set me on a truth seeking path, and helped to instill in me the necessity of always questioning the reality of what I was told, or even witnessed, and to NEVER accept the supernatural, or fantastical, explanation often provided without studying the evidence provided thoroughly.

If the purpose of having this outsized brain, and ability to reason, is to better understand the world around us, then we could have few better role models than James Randi.

Just my opinion.

You can visit the website to learn more about this documentary here. They are seeking investors, so if you are a mind....